The Republic of T.

WARNING: Video depicting severe alcohol withdrawal below.

Well, maybe. The latest report is that there were no illegal substances in Amy Winehouse’s system when she died.

Toxicology tests have found that “no illegal substances” were in singer Amy Winehouse’s system at the time of her death last month, her family said Tuesday.

“Results indicate that alcohol was present but it cannot be determined as yet if it played a role in her death,” the family said in a written statement, citing test results provided to them by authorities.

The 27-year-old singer, beloved for her talent but infamous for erratic public behavior, arrests and drug problems, was found dead at her apartment in London on July 23.

Alcohol was present, but we don’t know yet if drink had anything to do with her death. No surprise, since there are plenty of reports that Amy was still drinking in her final days. Still, that leaves at least one theory about what killed Amy Winehouse, which remains viable even in the light of this recent news.

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Answering the question, “Could rehab have saved Amy Winehouse?”, Patti Davis eloquently sums up what I tried to get across in two posts.

The truth is, overcoming an addiction is a solitary journey whether you drive through the gates of the best facility or sit in your room alone staring into the cavern in your soul you’ve tried so hard to run away from. Rehab can give you tools, but you walk the road alone. And as all of us who have made our way out of addiction will tell you, part of it was luck. There simply is no formula that can guarantee a way out, no trail of bread crumbs leading out of the forest. You grab onto something inside you, some part of you that has decided to live without the poisons you love so much, and you hope like hell you can hold on.

We still don’t know whether Winehouse took an overdose of drugs or a lethal combination or bad drugs (or none of the above), but her demons were visible for a long time. Those of us who have experienced the treacherous landscape of addiction and have lived to talk about it have known nights when we teetered on a dangerous boundary line. We held on and made it through. We got lucky. Others who tried just as hard couldn’t hold on — and faded to black.

She’s right.

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It seems like many people in Amy’s life who cared about her had also come to the realization that they couldn’t help her until she was ready to accept help. Again, Russell Brand put it better than anyone else.

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

Amy’s mother, seeing Amy for the last time just a day before her death, seemed to realize that her daughter’s death “only a matter of time.”

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Quelle suprise. Bristol Palin took the “fall down drunk, get up pregnant” route to parenthood.

Bristol Palin writes in her new book of losing her virginity to boyfriend Levi Johnston on a camping trip after getting drunk for the first time on too many wine coolers.

She awoke in her tent, alone, with no memories of what had happened as Johnston “talked with his friends on the other side of the canvas.” She had vowed to wait until marriage. And she had lied to her parents about where she was going.

Palin, a 20-year-old single mother and the daughter of former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, tells a story of “deception and disappointment” in the book, “Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far.”

The memoir, co-written with Nancy French, is scheduled for publication by William Morrow this week. The Associated Press purchased a copy Friday.

I just have a couple of things to say.

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Well, there goes the rest of the news cycle.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York will heed calls from across the political spectrum and resign over a sexting scandal that he lied about before admitting his involvement, a Democratic source with knowledge of the congressman’s plans said Thursday.

Weiner has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference in his home district, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she planned to issue a statement on her Democratic colleague after that.

“He is going to make an announcement,” Pelosi said. “I am not going to predicate any remarks on a decision that we haven’t heard yet.

Some House colleagues from New York offered their farewells to Weiner even before any official announcement.

“There is life after Congress for Anthony Weiner and I hope he devotes himself to repairing the damage he caused to his personal life,” said Democratic Rep.

Not that we didn’t see it coming. Nancy Pelosi cut him off at the knees, and then the president pulled the rug from under him.  (more…)

I was not there to hear Tracy Morgan’s now infamous, hateful anti-gay rant in the middle of a comedy performance in Nashville, as Kevin Rogers was. Had I been in town, it’s unlikely I would have been anyway, as I’ve never found Morgan to be all that funny, going all the way back to his SNL days. But I almost wish I had been, I’m not sure I would have been able to steel myself to stay in my seat for the entire thing, but at least I’d have heard it first hand.

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One of my favorite voices has been stilled.

R.I.P., Phoebe Snow.

Can someone explain to me why Charlie Sheen is on tour, instead of on medication? Come to think of it, why is he collecting speaker fees and possibly getting reality getting reality TV offers? Why is he going on an 20-city tour instead of going back to rehab?

OK. In one sense, I know the answer. (more…)

I read the news today. Oh boy.

Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.

The cause was congestive heart failure, her publicist, Sally Morrison, told The Associated Press.

In a world of flickering images, Ms. Taylor was a constant star. First appearing onscreen at age 9, she grew up there, never passing through an awkward age. It was one quick leap from “National Velvet” to “A Place in the Sun” and from there to “Cleopatra” as she was indelibly transformed from a vulnerable child actress into a voluptuous film queen.

In a career of more than 70 years and more than 50 films, she won two Academy Awards as best actress, for her performances as a call girl in “Butterfield 8” (in 1960) and as the acid-tongued Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (in 1966). Mike Nichols, who directed her in “Virginia Woolf,” said he considered her “one of the greatest cinema actresses.”

I’m not sure what I can add to all that has been and will be said. But here goes.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted about one of my odd celebrity crushes. Some of them are not so odd, and then some of them are kind of odd. I’m not sure where this one falls, but it came to mind when I read the latest news in the media industry that the Charlie Sheen implosion has become.

Apparently, on of the actors who may be up for consideration to replace Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men,” is one of my celebrity crushes, heretofore unmentioned.

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I think Ezra got it about right, re: NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams, following his “Muslim=Terrorist” remarks on Fox News. It may have been that NPR was looking for a reason to fire Williams, and he gave it to them. They, however, acted too drastically and too quickly. As Ezra said, if NPR wanted to fire Williams the best option would be to simply wait out his contract and quietly declined to renew. Maybe people would have questioned whether it was his remarks to O’Reilly that put him over the top, but NPR could have simply declined to comment. (Heck, they wouldn’t even have to tell Williams himself.)

And, no, I don’t buy Williams claim that NPR’s decision is a “chilling assault on free speech.” I say the same thing to Williams I said to Dr. Laura.

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Farewell, “Dr.” Laura. Alas, we knew you far too well.

Actually, there is just one thing before you go…

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I wonder what Lena Horne would say to Miss USA Rima Fakih.

Much has been written and will be written about Fakih’s pageant win. Not being a big fan of beauty pageants, I didn’t watch this one. So, my thoughts about it are pretty simple: Obviously, she met all the qualifications to participate in the competition, and lacking an ability to read the minds of the judges I can only assume she met and likely exceeded their standards for beauty and poise, and thus beat out her opponents. Leave her alone and let her enjoy her year-long reign.

On one hand it seems silly — given the unresolved fate of financial reform, the BP oil disaster, and any number of issues — that so much attention is being given to the outcome of the outcome of a beauty pageant. On the other hand, after while it made perfect sense to me. Because I thought of Lena Horne.

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I know I say this every time a favorite celebrity passes away, but this is one of those times when I mean it when I say a little bit of light went out of the world when Lena Horne left it last night.

Lena Horne, who was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92 and lived in Manhattan.

Her death was announced by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley.

Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.

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By now tributes have been posted in many places. So’ll I’ll just add mine to them, and say that a little bit of light went out in the world when Dixie Carter passed away.

“Designing Women” star Dixie Carter, whose Southern charm and natural beauty won her a host of television roles, has died at age 70.

Carter died Saturday morning, according to publicist Steve Rohr, who represents Carter and her husband, actor Hal Holbrook. He declined to disclose the cause of death or where she died. Carter lived with Holbrook in the Los Angeles area.

“This has been a terrible blow to our family,” Holbrook said in a written statement. “We would appreciate everyone understanding that this is a private family tragedy.”

A native of Tennessee, Carter was most famous for playing wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker for seven years on “Designing Women,” the CBS sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1993. The series was the peak of a career in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent Southern women.

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According to the new app I downloaded to my iphone, today is the birthday of Bill W.

Second Lieut. Bill Wilson didn’t think twice when the first butler he had ever seen offered him a drink. The 22-year-old soldier didn’t think about how alcohol had destroyed his family. He didn’t think about the Yankee temperance movement of his childhood or his loving fiance Lois Burnham or his emerging talent for leadership. He didn’t think about anything at all. “I had found the elixir of life,” he wrote. Wilson’s last drink, 17 years later, when alcohol had destroyed his health and his career, precipitated an epiphany that would change his life and the lives of millions of other alcoholics. Incarcerated for the fourth time at Manhattan’s Towns Hospital in 1934, Wilson had a spiritual awakening — a flash of white light, a liberating awareness of God — that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Wilson’s revolutionary 12-step program, the successful remedy for alcoholism. The 12 steps have also generated successful programs for eating disorders, gambling, narcotics, debting, sex addiction and people affected by others’ addictions. Aldous Huxley called him “the greatest social architect of our century.

It occurred to me, when I read the bio above, that back in July I somehow managed to reach 17 years of continuous sobriety. That I should read about Bill W. on Thanksgiving seems somehow appropriate, since my sobriety is one of the things I’m most thankful for. Without it, I most likely wouldn’t be here, and if I were I certainly wouldn’t have the life I have now or the family I have now. To some degree, I have Bill W. to thank for that — and just about every alcoholic who walked into an A.A. meeting and kept coming back often enough to keep it going long enough for someone like me to walk in the door.

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This is already being done by plenty of other people, but I can’t help myself. When a guy who just a month ago said “We need segregated buses,” takes umbrage at the notion that people think he’s a racist… Well, it’s just too hard to resist.

They are the ones with prejudice and bigotry coursing through their vanes [sic], through their hearts, and through their souls. They are consumed with jealousy and rage. They are all liberals–and make no mistake: That’s what this is about. It is about ideology. It isn’t about race. It’s about their being jealous and attempting to discredit me, and they’ve now sunk to the low of repeating fabricated quotes that they cannot source…. These people are scum.

Yeah. Sure, Rush.

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Tonight, I’m going to the Washington, DC premiere of Micheal Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I know there are people who can’t stand Moore, but I’ve seen just about all of his movies.

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There are no second acts in American lives.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It struck me as simultaneously ironic and poetic when, a few weeks ago, two of music biggest icons — each of whom in their own way represented the intoxicating excess that goes with a certain level of celebrity — went through transitions that were as similar as they were different. And within days of each other.

One, at least, no longer has to please his public — or seek its forgiveness. The other now faces the task of disproving the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote above.

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Clearly something is amiss. Let the record show that, as we say in the south, “he ain’t right.” Kelly Clarkson wonders what happened to him as a child. Obama called him a “jackass.”

Well, he did behave like one.

Seriously, though. I wonder if Kanye West really does have a problem, because I can very much identify with the trouble his mouth has gotten him into, again.

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